Staunton Spectator

A good-tempered, well-mannered child, is one of the most beautiful and blessed things of earth--the divinely human bud of a divinely flowering humanity. If children knew how much, by pleasant courtesy to one another and cheerful obedience to their parents, they can command of admiration and love, they would surely cultivate good behaviour and delight in it. In the social economy of the Chinese, irreverence towards parents and the aged, is regarded and punished as the most culpable act of childhood. Hence the universal modest and humble deportment of Chinese youth. They are not accustomed to nicknames and bickerings among themselves, and their intercourse with their elders is always deferential. These admirable habits of childhood, encouraged and cultivated by all proper consideration on the part of their parents and society, as well as by fundamental edicts of the State, seldom forsake them in maturer years.

"Honor thy father, and thy mother," is one of the Divine commandments, and the just punishment of childish irreverence towards the aged, may be learned from the history of the children who mocked Elijah. First of all, let children honour their parents--and if they honour, they will love and obey them. Let them avoid evil communications and evil companions. Let them keep their hearts and their tongues pure. Let them be sincere and honest. Let them speak the truth always--no matter what the temptation to falsehood, speak the truth--truthfulness in childhood is the chiefest of jewels.

This good Saxon word (wife) is after all, the dearest and most sacred word in the whole vocabulary of love. Around it clusters all that is most beautiful, chaste, and permanent in the tender passion. Into whatever forbidden paths the heart of man may wander, still it must return, at last, to the hallowed name of wife for consolation and rest. Any other relation between the sexes, however alluring to the imagination, invariably ends in wretchedness, in shame and degradation.

The great work to be accomplished in the present canvass is the preservation of the Union against the combined assaults of Sectionalism, North and South. Union or Disunion--that is the great and absorbing question in comparison with which all others upon which political parties have been heretofore divided sink into absolute insignificance. It is folly to mention, much less to quarrel over and separate upon mere matters of governmental policy, when the success of either of the two sectional parties now striving for the ascendance, may lead to the utter destruction of the government itself. The crisis which we have reached demands the oblivion of past differences, and the hearty and cordial union of all good men for the common patriotic object of preserving inviolate the sacred "palladium of our liberties."

We have ever believed that whenever the conviction forced itself upon the minds of the honest masses of the American people that the Union was really in peril, they would rise in their majesty and their strength to rebuke the traitorous designs of corrupt and selfish men. The people are now convinced, and the result everywhere will be a "regular ground swell" in behalf of the Constitution and the Union. Many of those, who have heretofore acted with the Democratic party, who would not believe us, cannot now doubt the disunion designs of many in their own ranks with whom they have heretofore cooperated, since their desertion of the regular Democratic organization to follow the leadership and fight under the treasonable flag of Wm. L. Yancey, who has justly been denominated the "Seward of the South." Into the arms of this designing and selfish man and his associates in mischief Breckinridge has deliberately thrown himself, and if elected by their influence and exertions, we should expect him to be the creature of their will.

We do not state these facts and ask Democratic people to believe them, upon our authority, but they are so told by many of the most prominent and honest men of their own party--not the leaders who are all committed to Yancey and Disunion--but by such men as those assembled in Convention at Staunton on the 16th, representing the people and not the politicians. We should be glad to see them unite cordially in the support of Bell, who was nominated as the candidate of a party specially organized for the preservation of the Union; but if they are unwilling to do that, we hope to see them stand firmly together in determined opposition to the election of Breckinridge. Those men in the Douglas Convention spoke noble and patriotic words in behalf of the Union boldly and fearlessly, and if the honest Democrats who have been unconsciously drawn into the disunion ranks cannot be induced to enter the regularly organized Union army, we trust that they will do the next best thing by enlisting with the conservative and Union-loving portion of their own party.